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Male lyrebirds create a complex acoustic illusion of a mobbing flock during courtship and copulation

Current Biology, ISSN: 0960-9822, Vol: 31, Issue: 9, Page: 1970-1976.e4
2021
  • 20
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  • 9
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  • 61
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  • 32
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  • 21
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You’ve Almost Certainly Been Duped by a Bird

On a dusky evening in 2007, while completing her Ph.D., Laura Kelley was traipsing through the backwoods of Queensland, Australia, when she heard her landlady shouting for her cat. Bonnie! Bonnie! Bonnie! came the call, just as it did every mealtime. Kelley peered across the property, hoping to say hello—but the woman was nowhere to be found. Only when Kelley gazed upward did she discover the true

Article Description

Darwin argued that females’ “taste for the beautiful” drives the evolution of male extravagance, 1 but sexual selection theory also predicts that extravagant ornaments can arise from sexual conflict and deception. 2, 3 The sensory trap hypothesis posits that elaborate sexual signals can evolve via antagonistic coevolution whereby one sex uses deceptive mimicry to manipulate the opposite sex into mating. 3 Here, the success of deceptive mimicry depends on whether it matches the receiver’s percept of the model, 4 and so has little in common with concepts of aesthetic judgement and ‘beauty.’ 1, 5–9 We report that during their song and dance displays, 10 male superb lyrebirds ( Menura novaehollandiae ) create an elaborate acoustic illusion of a mixed-species mobbing flock. Acoustic analysis showed that males mimicked the mobbing alarm calls of multiple species calling together, enhancing the illusion by also vocally imitating the wingbeats of small birds. A playback experiment confirmed that this illusion was sufficient to fool avian receivers. Furthermore, males produced this mimicry only (1) when females attempted to exit male display arenas, and (2) during the lyrebirds’ unusually long copulation, suggesting that the mimicry aims to prevent females from prematurely terminating these crucial sexual interactions. Such deceptive behavior by males should select for perceptual acuity in females, prompting an inter-sexual co-evolutionary arms race between male mimetic accuracy and discrimination by females. In this way the elaboration of the complex avian vocalizations we call ‘song’ could be driven by sexual conflict, rather than a female’s preference for male extravagance.

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221002104; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.003; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85101870221&origin=inward; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33636120; https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0960982221002104; https://ro.uow.edu.au/smhpapers1/1787; https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2821&context=smhpapers1; https://ro.uow.edu.au/test2021/1276; https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2285&context=test2021; https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.003; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4?utm_source=EA; http://www.cell.com/article/S0960982221002104/abstract; http://www.cell.com/article/S0960982221002104/fulltext; http://www.cell.com/article/S0960982221002104/pdf; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(21)00210-4; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4?dgcid=raven_jbs_aip_email#.YDiuX3OcrtI.twitter; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4?utm_campaign=press%20releases&utm_content=155013240&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-18477428; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4?rss=yes; https://www-sciencedirect-com.kuleuven.ezproxy.kuleuven.be/science/article/pii/S0960982221002104; https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00210-4?utm_campaign=press%20releases&utm_content=155013239&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-18477428

Anastasia H. Dalziell; Alex C. Maisey; Robert D. Magrath; Justin A. Welbergen

Elsevier BV

Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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